Growing pains as parent company demotes Tinder CEO

Listen to the full audio story

Download the MP3

Sean Rad, Tinder's CEO and co-founder, was demoted yesterday. Forbes, which broke the story, reported that IAC, Tinder's parent company, made the demotion in light of a sexual harassment lawsuit that a former employee filed against Rad and another co-founder Justin Mateen. In this lawsuit, which was settled for $1 million, Whitney Wolfe alleged that Mateen had sexually harassed her and had stripped her of her co-founder title because of her gender. Wolfe accused Rad of standing by and letting it happen. 

USC students who have used Tinder support this demotion, noting the irony of the founders of a dating service getting slapped with sexual harassment claims. However, USC business professor Kyle Mayer doesn't think Tinder made this decision just because of the lawsuit, but instead were considering Tinder's value and potential to grow over the long term. Tinder released a statement from Rad confirming as much.